


Liminality

by RottenAdel



Category: Final Fantasy XIV, Gundam 00
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crossover, Gen, Long-Distance Friendship, MMORPGs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 12:06:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6753193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RottenAdel/pseuds/RottenAdel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allelujah wanted to try something new, Tieria's having a bad day, Neil is trying to keep the peace, and Setsuna just wants to stab things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liminality

**Author's Note:**

> For day four of Gundam 00 Week. The prompt used was AU, so naturally, I combined two of my favorites.  
> In this verse, Neil plays a Hyur Midlander, Tieria plays a Miqo'te, Allelujah plays an Au'Ra (formerly Elezen), and Setsuna plays a Lalafell after being hit on for being a miqo'te too many times.

“For the last time; I am _not_ running Sastasha with you.”

There was a chorus of questions over the chat, but none louder than Tieria’s own. “Why are you making me waste my time with such an inefficient dungeon when Fate grinding at that level would be less time-consuming and more engaging?”

“Because we’re class leveling!” Neil protested. “Allelujah is trying to practice tanking and Sastasha is a good place to start.”

“Why does Allelujah need to practice tanking.” His deadpan expression was audible over their Discord channel, as was Allelujah’s nervous squeak as a result.

“Because Allelujah picked up Marauder and wants to give it a go.” Neil answered for him.

“A-actually, Hallelujah wanted to. I’m fine with being a Scholar.” Allelujah added for the sake of clarity.

That little addition wasn’t helping their argument in the least. Neil sought to rectify that with a different angle. “C’mon, we’d have another tank. Aren’t you always saying you want to try _not_ tanking?”

There was a low grumble, then a stretch of silence, as if Tieria was considering it. For so long their little group had been set in their roles. Tieria, whom had intricately set up his Paladin rotation to run with the efficiency of the rig he played the game on had always taken up the role as their team’s tank. He was good at it, with dozen macros for every situation with chat commands already built in. He could pull an entire room with such speed that it was almost _daunting_ for any random coming in to join their party, which was yet another reason why he insisted their roles be cemented. Having the duty finder assign someone of the proper level meant _explaining_ things, and heaven forbid he be asked not to speed through a dungeon he hated.

But it wasn’t as if this was inconvenient for his friends; the handful of players that made up the small Free Company of Celestial Being. There was Neil, who had picked up archer and stuck with it all the way through level capping the bard class. When the new expansion dropped and the machinist class was added on, Setsuna claims that he could hear his friend’s thrilled hollers from clear across the continent.

A joke, really, but Neil would admit that he shouted loud enough for his brother to call him and tell him to shut up. His brother lived two blocks down in another apartment complex. It was the most they’d said to each other in a month.

Setsuna himself had taken a liking to the stealth aspects of the ninja subclass. He didn’t really like taking the tank position, which made the first ten levels of his game time a chore. But once he’d been given the opportunity to pick up rogue, and the _speed_ that was involved, he was hooked.

Allelujah was the only one floundering for a solid class at this point. He’d taken up a couple caster classes, preferring to take the route of the group healer while they were all practicing together. Scholar seemed the best way to go if he was going to play a role as both attack and support. But lately Hallelujah was itching at the back of his mind to play, and seeing no feasible way for his rather aggressive other half to play a support role, he’d picked up an ax instead.

If he’d known that asking to switch roles would upset their solid team dynamic, he would have told Hallelujah to deal with it, but too late for that now.

“Tieria, if not Sastasha, what about another dungeon? We could do Copperbell, or Halatali.” Allelujah offered, trying to find a peaceful medium. He could understand why Tieria disliked Sastasha. There wasn’t anything inherently _wrong_ with the dungeon itself, it was that he’d run it so many times before the duty finder revamp that it had lost any ounce of fun. Since it was the lowest level dungeon, a lot of _new_ people ended up in it, which made playing the role of a speedrunning tank a huge chore.

There was a lengthy sigh and the creaking of a computer chair. “Okay, how many levels below Halatali are you.”

“Uh... three.”

Tieria sighed. “Too long. Just queue up for Tam-Tara. It’s not that long and there are smaller pulls.”

A collective sigh of relief. “Thanks, Tieria. Sorry.”

“I’m not mad.” Just mildly miffed. “Repair your gear and send an invite when you’re ready.”

Allelujah went about getting ready for the dungeon run while Setsuna sent his character to turn in some quests while he waited, but not before sending a quick tell to Neil.

 **Exia Raiser:** Find out what’s eating him

Neil chuckled almost nervously, which only served to earn him a sour look from Tieria, though it couldn’t be seen. Their cameras remained off ninety percent of the time for reasons seldom brought up.

 **Dynames Arms:** somehow i knew you’d send me

 **Exia Raiser:** Of course - he listens to you

 **Dynames Arms:** hardly

He tried to send a tell to Tieria’s character, only to get a message back that the player was “Busy”. Great, he was in one of _those_ moods. Neil pulled up the free company window and checked where Tieria was located. Ul’dah. Typical. _Probably the Alchemists’ Guild._

With a few clicks, his character was teleporting to the man’s location. Normally he was fairly easy to pick out in a crowd with his shining, augmented paladin armor, but what he found was not the usual armor, but low-level robes of a level 20 Conjurer. A healer.

_Huh?_

**Dynames Arms:** didn’t expect you in that

Tieria’s character looked away from the NPC he was talking to and turned to face Neil. It was a little strange seeing him in robes and not his usual circlet, but Neil had to admit he never got tired of see how the Miqo’tes looked in hoods, what with the special additions for the ears.

His status was taken off busy, a signal he would talk in private. Neil jumped at the chance.

 **Dynames Arms:** are you doing okay? it’s not like you to be so short with alle

 **Dynames Arms:** halle maybe. but not alle

 **Virtue Nadleeh:** Nothing is up. I am fine.

 **Dynames Arms:** yeah and hildebrand is useful

There was another long sigh over Discord before Tieria muted his mic. Neil did the same, for now. Setsuna and Allelujah wouldn’t ask questions.

 **Virtue Nadleeh:** It’s been a long week. I’ll apologize when we get out of Tam-Tara.

 **Dynames Arms:** do you wanna talk about it?

There was some truth to Setsuna’s claim that Tieria would listen to him. Of all the people in their little group, Neil was the one that took on the role of the big brother. He was the oldest of them, but that meant little in a game where the only numbers that mattered were level and rank. That didn’t change the fact that Tieria often confided in him, though it had taken some coaxing at first on Neil’s part.

This time was no different.

A party invite popped up, and Neil shook his head. Allelujah’s dungeon run would have to wait, then. He clicked accept, and their chat resumed there.

 **Virtue Nadleeh:** Recently my work has been called into question by the new supervisor at the office.

 **Virtue Nadleeh:** My performance in the past has set the precedent for others in my department, but as of late he seems intent on piling more and more onto my desk each morning.

 **Virtue Nadleeh:** Then today, he decided to call my work-ethic into question, as if my performance was somehow lacking now that he has given me an additional workload.

Well, that explained a lot. While the group as a whole emphasized that there was no requirement to share offline details with each other, real life had managed to come up quite a bit over the months they’d spent playing together. He knew that Tieria worked at a rather affluent technology firm as a developer, and that he took great pride in his work. He’d be on his way towards the top if he didn’t make the conscious decision to not constantly stress himself with his projects. There had been a collapse some months back from exhaustion; to the point that Tieria’s brother _and_ doctors demanded he scale it back for the sake of his health. It was a rough learning point for the man who was so driven to overachieve, but at least now Tieria knew the value of work-life balance.

It was the same incident that got him playing the game in the first place. Even when on a forced sabbatical for recovery, Tieria couldn’t sit still, and it seemed diving into Eorzea was a good way to keep himself occupied while recuperating.

And it was how they met, back when Neil was still getting the hang of Archer. They’d gone through the first expansion and on into the second together, picking up Allelujah and Setsuna, as well as a few others, along the way. Though there were hundreds, if not thousands of miles apart, Neil could easily consider them his best friends.

 **Dynames Arms:** have you thought about talking to HR about it? if you feel like you’re being harassed that’s a good place to start

 **Dynames Arms:** or maybe he just heard how good you are at your work and decided to test you?

 **Dynames Arms:** my job is less desk work and more labor so i’m probly not helping much

 **Virtue Nadleeh:** It’s fine. It’s just terribly frustrating, the whole ordeal.

 **Virtue Nadleeh:** Being told that your productivity is falling short when you have twice the workload as anyone else is the sort of injustice that I loathe.

 **Dynames Arms:** i get it. i’d be really upset and frustrated too.

 **Dynames Arms:** just remember that you’re only human and these things happen... you’re not a computer who can just constantly churn out a product

 **Virtue Nadleeh:** Sometimes I feel like it’d be better if I was. More efficient that way.

 **Dynames Arms:** i prefer you human tbh

 **Virtue Nadleeh:** Shut up.

 **Dynames Arms:** just try to relax ok? this is your de-stress game

 **Dynames Arms:** you don’t want Garm Gaga to put you on bedrest again :)

 **Virtue Nadleeh:** Ugh...

 **Virtue Nadleeh:** All right. I see your point.

 **Virtue Nadleeh:** That supervisor isn’t even worth the frustration. I will just have to prove him wrong.

Neil laughed at that, resting his chin in his hands.

 **Dynames Arms:** that’s the tieria i know

Another lengthy pause, one that was surely filled with Tieria making some remark about how Neil deserved a certain number of deaths while turning bright red. He chuckled at the thought.

 **[FC] Kyrios Arios:** Uh.... Guys? Everything OK?

Oh, right, dungeon run. Neil switched to the FC channel and hammered out a quick response.

 **[FC] Dynames Arms:** yeah just finishing up. virtue is playing healer for us.

 **[FC] Kyrios Arios:** Really?? Awesome! Let me know if u need help!!

 **[FC] Virtue Nadleeh:** I had to level Conjurer to get to Paladin, so I’m not concerned.

A pause.

 **[FC] Virtue Nadleeh:** But, thank you for the offer. You wanted to run Sastasha?

 **[FC] Kyrios Arios:** Yes please! Ty!!

 **[FC] Exia Raiser:** Unmute your mics - I can’t type and do my rotation at the same time

And a quick tell from Setsuna right after.

**_Exia Raiser:_** _Thanks_

With their microphones back on track, things returned to some semblance of normal. “Okay, let’s run Sastasha, then did you want to do Ifrit after, Alle?”

“I-if I’m high enough, yes! Otherwise we’ll do another quick run.”

“Tieria, any requests?”

“Healer drops. I’d like to pick up Astrologian after we get Alle up to speed on tanking.”

Neil invited the other two into the party and initiated the ready check.

“Picking up a Heavensward class, finally?”

A non-committal noise, and Neil could tell Tieria was blushing again. “It only makes sense. I imagine once Allelujah gets a proper taste of tanking, he’ll want to pick up Dark Knight.”

Allelujah laughed nervously. “Don’t tempt him, he’ll--” a pause, then a sigh. “Okay, yes, he’d like that.”

Even Setsuna had to laugh a little at that, relief in his tone. “Let’s go. I have to make dinner soon.”

“That time already? I guess I should think about making something too.” Neil glanced at the clock. Setsuna was two hours ahead of him, Allelujah five. Of the four, Tieria was closest, just an hour ahead. Their play times didn’t always line up, but they always tried to make time for each other in the end.

Just as friends should.

“All right, let’s go, guys.” Neil said, smiling to himself as the Instance window popped up.


End file.
